After the Arab Spring: power shift in the Middle East?: Iran and the Arab Spring

The events of the Arab Spring, it has been argued, have their precursors in Iran. Yet the proponents of such a view are split over which Iran it is that serves as the inspiration for events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere: is it, as some officials from the Islamic Republic claim, their own 1979 revolution, which unseated Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from the Peacock Throne, or the Twittering, YouTubing mass protests against that vision of a Republic which spilled into the streets of Tehran and other cities around the country three decades later?